Throwback: Read What You Wrote

When Isaac Würmann was eight, he wrote letters to the people living inside his walls.

His mom responded to the letters.

Würmann, a first-year journalism student at Carleton University, shared some of these letters at Rooster’s Coffeehouse on March 6 as part of an event put on by the Carleton chapter of Journalists for Human Rights called, Throwback: Read What You Wrote.

“Do you actually live in my house? If you do, you are amazing. You hide so well. Not that I look for you. It’s just… Well it’s just amazing,” Würmann read.

Würmann and eight other students shared pieces of their childhood writings ranging from diary entries and travel journals to class assignments and secret letters. The event also featured four musical performances.

“I hope you like the house I made you. I do believe in magic because I can do some magic. Did you watch the Junos with me last night?” Würmann read.

Brittney Cooke, first-year english student at Carleton, read excerpts from her Grade 8 diary. She said it was nice to be able to laugh at herself.

“I thought I was the centre of the universe at that age. I’d like to think that that’s different about me now. I was pretty self-absorbed.”

Cooke said it was comforting to hear people laugh with her as she read her diary out loud.

“It was a lot of fun,” she said.

Chris Breen, a second-year public affairs and policy management student at Carleton, read from the travel diary he kept on a family trip to Greece when he was 13.

“We were scouting the area. We found a smaller, rockier beach, the path to the good beach, and some area with water and cement around it. The place looks like it used to be a big party place, then the buildings got run down and now it sucks,” he read.

Breen said it was fun to remember how he felt when he wrote his journal entries.

“Now I choose when to be dumb, whereas when I was 13 I didn’t filter. Now it’s a choice and I don’t have an excuse. Then it was just how I was,” he said.

Erica Howes, third-year journalism student and president of Carleton Journalists for Human Rights said the event was a huge success and drew a larger crowd than she expected.

“Everyone was smiling and laughing. Everyone was loving it and having a great time,” she said.

Howes said all money raised from the event is going toward Journalists for Human Rights projects in Jordan. She said the funds will be used to purchase recorders and other equipment for journalists in Jordan, as well as to train local journalists.

“It’s providing equipment for them to tell their own stories in their home country, which is a lot more effective than having people come in from other countries,” Howes said.

Howes said the event raised more than three hundred dollars for JHR projects in Jordan.